Perspective on China from an expat working there

[Riddil]

Phew. Where to even start? Quick intro... I've been working in China for 1.5 years, about 7 months in Beijing, and the rest in Shanghai, and I've had the chance to tour the country far and wide, from Xi'An to ShenZhen. And life here is... different that what I think most Westerners may think.

I don't even know how to start with a "biggest", so I'm going to go in an unordered stream of conscious.

Move past the idea that all Chinese are evil, or bad, or lying. Most of them are SIMPLE. It's not that Chinese think it's wrong to use poison paint when making toys. The majority of them have no idea it's even happening because the media is heavily filtered. What it comes down to is a few ultra-rich factory owners that will lie-cheat-steal to get every penny possible. It's basically the same thing that was happening in the US during the Industrial Revolution. The BIG difference here is that in the US the people got MAD about being lied to, poisoned, and abused, so the public forced a change. There are a few things in China preventing a similar movement....
- Filtered media keeps people from knowing the extent of the problem
- "That's the way life is" kind of mentality keeps people from pushing for more
- Without an elected body of government there's no electorate that is motivated to help the public, only to do the minimum possible to stay in power

In my post about the US, I complained about "media-for-the-masses". I'll tell you what's worse... media-to-lie-to-the-masses. It's a JOKE. First, when all the Chinese product recalls were happening world-wide you didn't hear a peep about it in China. Not a word. Finally there was SO MUCH media attention that it started to filter in, so the gov't decided they need to handle it. What you found were a few articles buried deep, talking about how all these foreign countries are afraid of China rising to power, so they're making extravagant and false claims to try to cripple China's growth. And people are more happy to hear the great news about how their country is looking after them, and they will hate the outside world even more.

What's MORE, I read an article where the local government of one of the factories that made toys for Mattel is going to help file a lawsuit against Mattel. They allege it's 100% Mattel's fault because they were just doing the job as dictated by Mattel, and when the problem went public, Mattel pushed all the blame onto them, tarnished their reputation, and now they are losing millions in lost revenue since they can't get new customers. And everyone who reads the article just thinks, "sure, that's perfectly reasonable, I'm sure that's the way it happened".

In my department we hired a new employee who just returned from the UK where he studied for his master's degree. When asked about what he missed most about the UK, he answered, "the sky was so blue". When the rest of the department asked about it, he explained, quite simply, well, the air in UK and other countries is so clean because they don't manufacture anything. Everything is manufactured in China. So the result is they get to have clean air, and we have to live with this bad air. I sat in shock as everyone nodded their heads knowingly, accepting an obvious truth....

(phew, too many tangents to go down.... how to choose one?)

Which brings me to my next gripe... the air, in this WHOLE damn country, is TERRIBLE. Shanghai is decent. Beijing is awful, and most other cities are nearly unlivable. No joke, I'd argue that in Beijing, at least 30% of the days you can't see to the end of the road because the smog is so thick. And in Xi'An it's so bad that the people living there can go for MONTHS and never see the sun or the moon. The only way to know if it's raining is if there is water falling through the eternal haze, because it's impossible to see any clouds.

And what's more shocking, everyone, and I include even very educated people, will tell you, "Oh, that's just the fog. It's China. China has always been foggy". Hmm. Ok. I've been to Ireland. I've been to the blue-ridge mountains in the Eastern US. I know what fog looks like, and that ain't it! At best, what you find from people is the story confirming they're the world's manufacturer, and bad air is the price they pay.

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